The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

sort—but
actions which aim at honor and advantage are absolutely the best.
The conditional action is only the choice of a lesser evil; whereas
these are the foundation and creation of good. A good man may make
the best even of poverty and disease, and the other ills of life;
but he can only attain happiness under the opposite conditions (for
this also has been determined in accordance with ethical arguments,
that the good man is he for whom, because he is virtuous, the
things that are absolutely good are good; it is also plain that his
use of these goods must be virtuous and in the absolute sense
good). This makes men fancy that external goods are the cause of
happiness, yet we might as well say that a brilliant performance on
the lyre was to be attributed to the instrument and not to the
skill of the performer.
    It follows then from what has been said that some things the
legislator must find ready to his hand in a state, others he must
provide. And therefore we can only say: May our state be
constituted in such a manner as to be blessed with the goods of
which fortune disposes (for we acknowledge her power): whereas
virtue and goodness in the state are not a matter of chance but the
result of knowledge and purpose. A city can be virtuous only when
the citizens who have a share in the government are virtuous, and
in our state all the citizens share in the government; let us then
inquire how a man becomes virtuous. For even if we could suppose
the citizen body to be virtuous, without each of them being so, yet
the latter would be better, for in the virtue of each the virtue of
all is involved.
    There are three things which make men good and virtuous; these
are nature, habit, rational principle. In the first place, every
one must be born a man and not some other animal; so, too, he must
have a certain character, both of body and soul. But some qualities
there is no use in having at birth, for they are altered by habit,
and there are some gifts which by nature are made to be turned by
habit to good or bad. Animals lead for the most part a life of
nature, although in lesser particulars some are influenced by habit
as well. Man has rational principle, in addition, and man only.
Wherefore nature, habit, rational principle must be in harmony with
one another; for they do not always agree; men do many things
against habit and nature, if rational principle persuades them that
they ought. We have already determined what natures are likely to
be most easily molded by the hands of the legislator. An else is
the work of education; we learn some things by habit and some by
instruction.
XIV
    Since every political society is composed of rulers and subjects
let us consider whether the relations of one to the other should
interchange or be permanent. For the education of the citizens will
necessarily vary with the answer given to this question. Now, if
some men excelled others in the same degree in which gods and
heroes are supposed to excel mankind in general (having in the
first place a great advantage even in their bodies, and secondly in
their minds), so that the superiority of the governors was
undisputed and patent to their subjects, it would clearly be better
that once for an the one class should rule and the other serve. But
since this is unattainable, and kings have no marked superiority
over their subjects, such as Scylax affirms to be found among the
Indians, it is obviously necessary on many grounds that all the
citizens alike should take their turn of governing and being
governed. Equality consists in the same treatment of similar
persons, and no government can stand which is not founded upon
justice. For if the government be unjust every one in the country
unites with the governed in the desire to have a revolution, and it
is an impossibility that the members of the government can be so
numerous as to be stronger than all their enemies put together. Yet
that governors should excel their subjects is undeniable. How all
this is to be effected, and in what way they will respectively
share in the government, the legislator has to consider. The
subject has been already mentioned. Nature herself has provided the
distinction when she made a difference between old and young within
the same species, of whom she fitted the one to govern and the
other to be governed. No one takes offense at being governed when
he is young, nor does he think himself better than his governors,
especially if he will enjoy the same privilege when he